IRRODL Volume 4, Number 2

Abstract

Pointing to the "objectivised, rationalized, technologically-based interaction," Peters (1973) referred to the then prevailing correspondence forms of distance education as "the most industrialized form of education" (p. 313). With such features as assembly line methods; division of labor; centralized processes of teaching materials development, production and dispatching; student admissions enrollment systems; automated registration, course allocation, and student support, and personnel management systems, distance education institutions demonstrated management structures and practices utilized in industrial and business organizations. Large numbers of courses and students were thus "processed" in correspondence, radio, and televisionbased distance education systems.Over the past decade or so, there has been a major worldwide expansion of distance education systems, particularly online, Web-based systems. Unlike prior distance education systems, however, network-based distance education models do not so readily accommodate industrialized forms of education. Indeed, the interaction that network-based models enable between students and course content, teachers and peers, sets practical and attenuates the extent to which such teaching-learning transactions may be regarded a form of industrialization.This divergence from industrial patterns of mass production is further reinforced by, currently in vogue, psychological approaches to learning that encourage abandonment of traditional teacherdirected exposition and passive student assimilation of the structures of objective reality. Constructivism calls for teaching that encourages students' active engagement in the construction of their own cognitive structures and perceptions of reality. To encourage constructivist thinking in the context of network-based distance education, teachers encourage active teacher-student and student-peer dialogue. However, there are practical limits to the number of students with whom an instructor can teach. The finite capacity of teachers to conduct and monitor these different forms of student interaction imposes limits on the capacity of institutions to match the massive numbers of students served by correspondence and mass media-based distance education systems.Notwithstanding these logistical and practical limits to applications of industrial mass production methods to online distance education at the stage of implementation, such applications continue to be relevant for other stages of distance education design and development. When reliant on print-based course materials, large distance education providers, for example, usually maintain large stockpiles of course materials to be shipped as needed to enrolled students. Production of such materials incurs costs of printing, stockpiling, and warehousing. Printing presses and warehouse facilities occupy space. Materials need to be stored, moved, and processed; sometimes Cookson, Vol. 4, No. 2, Editorial: Does "lean thinking" relate to network-based distance education? 2 they become ou...